Horizon Forbidden West stealth tips – How to sneak past machines undetected

Stealth is a key part of Horizon Forbidden West’s gameplay. Given how dangerous the game’s post-apocalyptic setting is, Aloy regularly has to rely on staying unseen if she is to survive her journey west. Thankfully, she’s got quite a few tools to help her evade enemies.

The game’s machines are deadly, but they’re also quite easy to figure out. Here are some tactics that we found useful when sneaking past these metal menaces in Horizon Forbidden West.

Use your Focus

Aloy’s Focus is probably your best tool for sneaking through groups of enemies. To activate it, press in on the right analog stick and hold it until a blue field appears around Aloy. You’ll then be able to scan anything around Aloy, including enemy machines. When scanning machines, you can view information about them, such as what their weak spots are, and also tag them to keep track of their positions; the latter feature is especially useful for maintaining situational awareness while sneaking around.

You can also use the Focus to highlight a machine’s routes using the R1 button, which will you tell you where it will travel, provided it doesn’t notice you. This feature is especially useful if you want to get up to some mischief by planting traps along a machine’s path.

Hide in the tall grass and always stay crouched

If you stand out in the open, chances are a machine is going to notice you. To greatly mitigate this risk, try hiding in tall grass whenever possible. You can do this by crouching while standing in tall grass. You’ll be rendered nigh-invisible to machines if they haven’t spotted you yet. For every unaware machine you come across, we recommend finding a nice patch of grass to plot out your strategy from.

Additionally, while we especially recommend crouching in tall grass, it’s probably best that you stay crouched more often than not during stealth sections. Enemies will hear you if you move while standing, making quietly crouch-walking the optimal way to maneuver around unsuspecting foes.

Throw rocks to distract machines

Rocks are pretty easy to come by, and they’re quite useful when sneaking. You can throw them to distract enemies, which can either open an enemy up to a Silent Strike, or allow you to slip by unnoticed. To throw a rock, use the left and right directional pad buttons to equip rocks for quick use. Once you tap down on the directional pad, Aloy will ready the rock to be thrown; just hit the R2 button to toss it through the air.

Silent Strikes

Silent Strikes are simply stealth attacks you can perform on unsuspecting enemies when positioned behind them. To perform one, just hit the R1 button when prompted after sneaking up on a machine. This can be a useful way to quietly dwindle enemy numbers down.

It should be noted, however, that Silent Strikes will not always kill a machine. You can tell if a Silent Strike will kill or not based on if a skull icon appears next to the prompt. If the icon is there, your Silent Strike will be an instant kill; if it’s not, prepare for a fight if you opt to perform this maneuver.

Upgrade the Infiltrator Skill Tree

Forbidden West has several skill trees for you to upgrade, but the Infiltrator one is the tree that will help the most while sneaking. Many of these upgrades add buffs to attacks performed while hidden, as well as help reduce your visibility to enemies. Among the most useful skills is Stealth Stalker, which allows Aloy to make herself nearly invisible to easily sneak by her foes.